The city’s convention and visitor’s bureau is still mulling over office-space options, but its VisitDallas Experience Center is getting a new high-profile venue at Klyde Warren Park. Its move and collaboration with the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation will kickstart a $76 million expansion of KWP, adding 1.2 acres west of St. Paul Street.
Along with additional green space and gathering spots, the expansion includes a 20,000-square-foot pavilion that will house the VisitDallas center, currently located in Dallas’ West End neighborhood. Design and construction is slated to get underway in 2019, with completion coming as early as 2022.
“This project fulfills the vision we outlined when we began talking about decking over Woodall Rodgers a decade ago, and it is the next step in improving the connectivity of the Park and the Arts District with the West End, Victory Park, and the Perot Museum,” said Jody Grant, chairman of the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation.
Hailed as an engineering feat, the 5.2-acre, $110 million Klyde Warren Park opened in 2012. Since then, it’s had more than six million visitors and created more than $2 billion in economic impact, and driven up values of properties that surround the park. The expansion is expected to provide another $850 million in stimulus to the region.
In announcing the expansion, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings called Klyde Warren Park one of the highlights of his term in office. “I love that the chasm that Woodall Rodgers Freeway created between downtown and Uptown is now in our rearview mirror,” he said. “The park spanned these segments of the city, spawning billions in development in the process, and representing one of the most successful infrastructure investments in the city’s history.”
VisitDallas is represented in its search for office space by Kate Sudol, Randy Cooper, Craig Wilson, and Wills Bauer of Cushman & Wakefield. The organization currently occupies the 28,500-square-foot seventh floor at Republic Tower in downtown Dallas.
Click through the slideshow to get a sneak peek of the KWP expansion.
For more on the park, check out D Magazine’s special issue, published when the project opened in 2012.
